A coming-of-age story in which no one really comes of age; a brilliantly acted movie with a cast of nonactors; a film that depicts interlocking cultural worlds without the P.C. superficiality that often mars such pictures.

3. Flirting with DisasterWritten and directed by David O. Russell

This screwball road movie is by far the funniest film to star Ben Stiller, but that just scratches the surface of its merits. It has a deep bench, and some of its best pleasures involve the supporting players, from Alan Alda and Lily Tomlin as aging desert hippies to Josh Brolin and Richard Jenkins as gay feds in love.

4. Bring the PainDirected by Keith TruesdellWritten by Chris Rock

The most essential hour of stand-up comedy to be recorded in the 1990s.

5. MicrocosmosWritten and directed by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Perennou

No angels, just insects.

6. Conspirators of PleasureWritten and directed by Jan Svankmajer

Cinema's greatest surrealist since Bunuel spins a weird web of fetishes and invisible connections. A romantic comedy on bad acid.

A dark comedy, or perhaps a bleakly comic drama, about an unplanned encounter between a manipulative New Age therapist, one of his patients, and their wives. Constantly unsettling, as though the characters' mind games are spilling off the screen.

9. Paradise LostDirected by Joe Berlinger and Bruce Sinofsky

A modern witch hunt is captured on film. The result is another rarity: an investigative documentary that makes a genuinely compelling case rather than an outline of a case best read elsewhere.

N.B.: According to the IMDB, The Wife and Forgotten Silver technically debuted in 1995. That may well be true, but I left them out when I posted my 1995 list last year and I wouldn't want them to be lost on the cutting room floor.